


wintercearig

by schweet_heart



Series: Merlin Fic [120]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Rise of the Guardians Fusion, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Best Friends, Bittersweet Ending, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Childhood Sweethearts, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, M/M, Magical Realism, Mutual Pining, Pining, Reunion Sex, Reunions, Supernatural Elements, Temporary Character Death, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-02-07 23:04:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12851427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: Rise of the Guardians fusion/AU. Arthur always wears at least three layers in the winter, and he sleeps with an electric blanket and the heating on from late autumn until the middle of spring. Of those who know him, Morgana is the only one who notices, but she knows better than to say anything. If asked, Arthur will only claim it’s because he feels the cold more than most people.It’s not even really a lie.Written for Winter Knights 2017.





	wintercearig

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to K for the beta, and to the mods for hosting this wonderful fest. This fic was originally started for Merlin Horror 2016, but it kind of got away from me a bit, so I'm glad to finally have the chance to finish it!
> 
> Note that I have chosen not to use Archive Warnings for this fic – therefore, please read the tags carefully, or see the end notes for spoilers/content notes.

 

I

 

_NOW_

 

Arthur always wears at least three layers in the winter, and he sleeps with an electric blanket and the heating on from late autumn until the middle of spring. Of those who know him, Morgana is the only one who notices, but she knows better than to say anything. If asked, Arthur will only claim it’s because he feels the cold more than most people.

 

It’s not even really a lie.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


_THEN_

 

Merlin Emrys was just the housekeeper’s boy and therefore not really anyone, leastwise not in the way that Arthur and Morgana were anyone, except that he was also Arthur’s closest friend.

 

The first time Arthur met Merlin, Merlin was seven and Arthur seven-and-three-quarters, and it was three days after the first snowfall. Ealdor Primary was closed for the day and Merlin and Will had escaped into the drifts, excited by the prospect of snowmen and snowball fights, with hot chocolate for afters. Arthur wasn’t even supposed to be outside, but his father and Morgana were fighting again and nobody noticed him slip out the back, taking his scarf and coat from the hook as an afterthought.  

 

Outside, it was colder than he expected, the kind of bitter winter chill that made your breath freeze in your lungs and your nose ache. Even at less-than-eight, Arthur had learned that the cold was dangerous, in the same way that Father’s antique swords were dangerous, and the same way that he shouldn’t play too close to the fire. He was a big boy, though, and Father kept telling him that he ought to show more initiative—one of those grown-up words that really meant he should stop being such a disappointment: too quiet, too shy, too un-Pendragon-like. No one would mind if he just had one _small_ adventure. He’d be back before they even knew he was gone.

 

Their meeting, later, seemed like one of those childhood inevitabilities. Arthur walked unwittingly into an all-out war between Merlin and Will, took a snowball to the face and fell flat on his bum in the snow, and he could just _hear_ Morgana’s stupid, girly laughter if she ever found out. He was angry—there were tears pricking at his eyes—he was _really, really_ angry, and then suddenly there was a face leaning over him, all blue eyes and black hair and the most ridiculous ears he’d ever seen.

 

“Hi,” said the face. “Sorry, we didn’t mean to hit you. Are you all right?”

 

Arthur knew it wasn’t polite to stare, but he stared anyway. The boy was kind of pretty, in a weird sort of way, and he was smiling so broadly Arthur was sure he must be soft in the head. Morgana’s laughter in his ears grew even louder and more unpleasant.

 

“No, I’m not all right,” Arthur snapped, sitting up and brushing the powdery snow from his face and neck. Some of it slid down inside his collar and he wriggled, a miserable chill working its way down his spine. “You knocked me over and it’s cold and I hate you. And your ears are stupid.”

 

The other boy glared at him. “My ears are _not_ stupid,” he said. “And at least I’m not a prat. If I’d known you were going to be so mean, I’d have thrown the snowball at you on purpose.”

 

“You can’t talk to me like that!” Arthur exclaimed, getting to his feet. His trousers were soaked and dripping, and his fingers were so stiff in the sodden wool of his gloves he had some difficulty forming them into fists. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

 

“Oi, Merlin!” Another boy came up to them, bigger than Merlin, bigger even than Arthur. He looked cross. “Come on, let’s go. He’ll only tell Mister Pendragon and get us both in trouble.”

 

He stuck out his tongue, and Arthur shut his mouth with a snap. It was worse because he _had_ been going to tell his father; his father would sort them out, and he’d give them both such a telling-off that they wouldn’t come anywhere near Arthur ever again. But now he couldn’t because that would be doing what the big boy said he was going to do, and Father always said you should keep people guessing and never let them think they had the upper hand.

 

“Shan’t,” Arthur said instead, then picked up a double handful of snow and rubbed Merlin’s face in it.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


After that, they became fast friends. Well, not quite: it took a few more years of pigtail-pulling to get to that point, but that was where it started. Merlin told him later that the only reason he forgave Arthur for that little incident was because of the time Arthur snuck out of the house to get him a cake for his tenth birthday, a proper, sticky chocolate one and not the plain old sponge cake his mum always got because it was all she could afford. Arthur informed him that, technically, Merlin was the one who had hit him first, so really he was lucky _Arthur_ forgave _him_ , which he only did because he had been taught to be kind to the less fortunate.

 

Winter, in those days, meant Merlin laughing, usually at him. Strangely, Arthur found he didn’t really mind.

  


 

* * *

 

 

II

  
  


_NOW_

 

“I’m not going,” Arthur says flatly.

 

Morgana looks at him across the table with an expression that says she’s not at all surprised, but it’s too close to pity to make Arthur feel any better. He turns back to buttering his toast, pretending he can’t still feel her eyes on him. “I have assignments to do, reading to catch up on—I can’t just go swanning off whenever I feel like it.”

 

“It’s only for two weeks, Arthur,” his sister says, unimpressed. “And I know for a fact that you have no other plans for Christmas break. You can afford to take a fortnight off and come to the Alps with us.”

 

“No.” Arthur keeps his voice firm. After years of dealing with Morgana’s particular brand of cajolery, he knows that if he wavers even one iota, before he knows it he’ll be doing whatever she asks: the only way to win is not to give her an opening.

 

Morgana slides onto the bar stool across from him and leans her elbows on the countertop, her eyes boring into him. Arthur reaches for the peanut butter, determined not to look at her.

 

“Arthur.”

 

“I said no, Morgana.”

 

“It’ll be good for you,” she says, almost but not quite wheedling. “You need to get outside, enjoy the snow for once.”

 

“I don't want to.”

 

“Gwen will be there!” Morgana leans down so that he has to look her in the face, and she’s smiling, maybe a little desperately. Arthur feels his guts twist with something like guilt because he knows she hates winter too, she just has a different way of showing it.

 

“All the more reason why I shouldn’t be,” he says. “You know we’ve only been broken up for a few months.”

 

“Yeah, and you seem really heartbroken about that.” She rolls her eyes at him. “Arthur—it’s been _years_. You really need to— ”

 

“Move on, yes, thank you, I’m aware.”

 

Arthur picks at his toast, peeling off the crusts and stuffing them into his mouth, because he can’t tell her just how much the idea of moving on _hurts_ , stupidly and insistently, even after all this time. He’s always careful in the snow, even when he knows there’s solid ground beneath it; he has snow tires and a first aid kit and emergency supplies for everything up to and probably including a zombie apocalypse. He never goes ice skating. Sometimes he wonders what he’s trying to prove, since Merlin is already gone.

 

Morgana just watches him, the way she does sometimes, her green eyes sad and tired at the edges, and Arthur keeps eating steadily, the toast turning to sawdust in his mouth. Finally, when Arthur is left with only crumbs, Morgana puts her hand on his arm.

 

“Arthur,” she says softly. “I’m not saying you should forget about Merlin. He was your best friend, and I know how much you loved him. But—he wouldn’t want you to stay cooped up here every winter, waiting for the sun to come out. You know he wouldn’t.”

 

Arthur stares at her, more out of surprise than anything. They never mention Merlin explicitly if they can help it. They haven’t talked about him in ages, not since the last time ended with Arthur getting so drunk he drove his car into a tree and they ended up in the A&E for about twelve hours. Morgana still doesn’t know the whole story of what happened back then, but she does know better than to mention Merlin by name. Usually.

 

Morgana shakes him. “Are you listening to me? You have to live your life, Arthur, you can’t just—just go through the motions, pretending everything is okay when it so clearly isn’t!”

 

“Leave me alone, ‘Gana,” Arthur says. “I’m fine.”

 

“You are _not_ ,” she says fiercely. “I’m worried about you.”

 

“Yes, well.” Arthur pulls his arm back, stepping out of her reach under the pretence of getting himself some more coffee. “I already told you that I’m fine. I really don’t know what else you want me to say.”

 

“Say you’ll go with me,” she says at once, and Arthur could have kicked himself. “If you’re really fine, come to the Alps with us.”

 

“Morgana…”

 

“Two weeks and I’ll get off your back. I might even apologise for harassing you.”

 

Arthur hesitates, letting the ritual of pouring coffee and inhaling serve as an excuse for a pause, the heat seeping into his hands where they’re wrapped around the mug. Perhaps some time away will do him good. It’s not as if he has to go out in the snow or anything—he could just stay in the lodge for most of the trip. And if it got Morgana to leave him alone…

 

He turns back to find her watching him shrewdly. “Two weeks in Switzerland, and you’ll stop bothering me?” he asks. “Permanently?”

 

“If that’s what you want,” she says. “But you can’t just spend all your time huddled by the fire. You have to go out on the slopes sometime. Skiing, snowboarding, I don’t care which as long as you _enjoy_ yourself for once.”

 

Arthur glares at her. He doesn’t want to enjoy himself in the snow; he doesn’t _like_ winter. But there’s something in the way Morgana says it—like it’s a challenge, and one she’s fairly certain he’ll fail—that makes her impossible to turn down.

 

“Fine,” Arthur finds himself saying, setting his jaw against his better judgment. “When do we leave?”

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


Uther’s old cabin is more of a chalet than a hunting lodge, which is to say that it’s practically a mansion. He used to take Arthur and Morgana there every year when they were children, but he had never allowed Merlin to come along, a childhood disappointment which Arthur now regards as something of a relief. He runs his hand briefly over the wooden doorframe, hesitating one last time, then steps inside, setting his luggage down just inside the door. Lance follows him, nodding at Arthur as he passes, then Leon, Gwen and Morgana traipse in after him, laughing at some joke Arthur hadn’t heard.

 

“I’m going to start the fire,” Arthur says, because if there’s one thing he knows how to do well, it’s warm things up a bit, and he doesn’t miss Morgana’s pointed glance as he steps across to the fireplace in the living room. He ignores her. He’s here, isn’t he? And it’s dark outside, fingers of frost curling over the cabin like they’re trying to get in, the snowy landscape bleak and featureless as it slopes away from them. They need the heat to chase away the ghosts from the hills.

 

“Here, let me help,” Lance says, crouching down beside him. “I’m freezing.”

 

Lance is a bit of an unknown quantity. Arthur has met him a few times, mostly in passing; he knows Morgana was the one to set him up with Gwen, which is enough to make him wary of the man. But he seems nice enough, and he’s good with the fire, his hands steady and sure as he lays out the wood.

 

“You’ve done this before.”

 

“Once or twice.” Lance flashes him a grin. “Used to go camping with my parents when I was a kid. Made Dad teach me about wilderness survival and all that.”

 

Arthur smiles back. “Must’ve been fun.”

 

“I loved it,” Lance admits. “It’s what got me started on environmentalism. Just—wanting to protect those beautiful spaces, you know?”

 

Arthur nods. He knows all about the need to protect the things you love.

 

“I haven’t been out in a while, though,” Lance says, his voice turning quieter. “My dad died last year, and I haven’t had the heart for it.”

 

Arthur stills, holding tight to a log of wood.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says.

 

Lance shrugs one shoulder. “He was sick for a long time; it wasn’t unexpected. But I do miss him, you know? I just don’t feel right going out there anymore.”

 

“Yeah,” Arthur says, clearing his throat. “Yeah, I know what that’s like.”

 

He steps closer to the fireplace and adds the log he’s holding to the pile, arranging it carefully so that it won’t tumble onto the carpet and burn the place down around their ears. Lance adds more kindling, stuffing wads of paper and thin twigs into the spaces, then sits back as Arthur sets it alight.

 

“We should probably unpack,” Arthur says, watching as the flames take hold.

 

Lance flicks a small glance at him, but instead of saying anything he just gets to his feet. He brushes his hands off on his jeans and offers one of them to Arthur, helping him stand too. Before them, the fire is blazing merrily, and the warmth of it washes over Arthur like a balm. Warmth means safety, safety means warmth. Morgana might be able to drag him out into the middle of nowhere, and she might harass him into spending time in the snow with her and her friends, but this is the one thing he will never give up.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


That night, Arthur has the dream again, for the first time since he was a teenager. He’s alone in the cabin and it’s snowing outside, so hard and thick he can barely see out of the window. Someone is knocking at the glass. Arthur knows he should let them in—it’s cold out there, they’ll freeze to death in this weather—but something in him doesn’t want to, as if in opening the door he will let the winter in as well, so he hides in his closet and clamps his hands over his ears, hoping that the sound will go away.

 

He wakes up so cold he can see his breath, his fingers numb as he checks the dial on the thermostat and his electric blanket. Both are still working fine, turned up to the highest setting as they always are in winter. But Arthur still feels cold.

  
  


 

* * *

  


III

  


_THEN_

 

Merlin had wanted to be an artist, or possibly a sculptor. He’d decided as much in Year Eleven, when Uther had forced Arthur to take art classes for a term and he had refused to go unless Merlin was allowed to come too. Apparently, it was all part of Uther’s plan to have a ‘well-rounded’ son, and he was willing to pay for Merlin’s tuition as well if it meant Arthur would do as he was told. Merlin had teased Arthur horribly about those words, suggesting that he already _was_ ‘well-rounded’ — in the stomach — for which Arthur had retaliated with disparaging comments about Merlin’s hair and his apparent inability to grow beyond the width of a particularly fragile twig. And yet, on the second week of class, it had been Merlin who slipped his arm through Arthur’s and confessed that, actually, art was _amazing_ , and could they possibly keep going forever because he never wanted classes to end.

 

Arthur hated art class. In most of his other classes, he was one of the top students, and there were very few subjects that he couldn’t master, but when it came to creativity of the sort that would impress Mrs. Singh, he was at a loss. She told him to “just paint what you see, Arthur,” but the brushes were always too thick and unwieldy, and he inevitably got paint everywhere except on the paper he was meant to be using. It was frustrating and humiliating, and he loathed it.

 

When Uther summoned Arthur into his study at the end of term and asked what extra-curricular activities he would like to pursue the next year, however, art class was one of the first on the list.

 

“I thought you hated art,” Morgana said, her eyes narrowing at him suspiciously. “You’re terrible at it. That last painting you brought home looked like an electrocuted cat.”

 

“It was supposed to be a banana!” Arthur exclaimed, outraged, and she giggled.

 

“I rest my case.”

 

Arthur folded his arms and looked away from her. “That’s why I need more lessons, then, isn’t it?”

 

“Right.” Morgana continued to study him for a long, uncomfortable moment. “You just can’t admit defeat, can you, Arthur? It’s almost cute, really.”

 

Arthur said nothing. The way Merlin’s face had lit up when he had (grudgingly) agreed to sign up for another term was more than compensation for the fact that Morgana now teased him about his drawing twice as much as before.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


_NOW_

 

To his surprise, Arthur finds it easier to enjoy himself with the others there. It helps to have someone around to distract him from his thoughts, and though he still feels cold to the bone every morning when he wakes up, he doesn’t say anything to Morgana; she’ll only look at him with that pitying expression and tell him it’s all in his head. He manages a few green runs on the slopes and doesn’t die, doesn’t even have a panic attack, but it’s draining, and every evening he finds himself worn out and aching, while every night the same figure knocks on the window in his dreams.

 

He would probably have continued ignoring it if it hadn’t been for the Incident. That’s what they end up calling it, voices low and concerned as they huddle around the fire later that evening. Arthur is holding an ice pack to his ankle, although the doctor has told them it’s only a mild sprain and that he’s very lucky, because it could have been a whole lot worse.

 

Arthur knows it could have. He’d fallen at least a hundred feet—he shouldn’t be alive.

 

When the doctor has gone, Morgana plops down on the sofa next to him and wraps an arm around his waist, leaning against him in silence for a moment. Arthur looks into her drawn, pale face and wonders what she’s thinking.

 

“Are you all right?” he asks, then feels ridiculous. Of course she’s not all right: none of them are. But for once Morgana doesn’t tease him.

 

“I’ve been better,” she says, smiling wanly.

 

“It was pure chance, you know,” Arthur says, keeping his voice low. “I didn’t see the crevasse either; you weren’t to know it was there. It was just one of those things.”

 

“And was it also pure chance that you survived a drop that ought to have killed you?” she asks, just as quietly.

 

“Maybe it wasn’t as deep as it looked.”

 

“Mate.” Leon leans against the back of the sofa, looking at him with serious eyes. “We were all there; we all saw it. The fact that you didn’t break your neck is the closest thing to a miracle I’ve ever witnessed. I’m still not sure it _isn’t_ a miracle.”

 

Gwen, coming back into the room after seeing out the doctor, nods in agreement, her eyes red-rimmed. “It was the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen,” she says, her hands twisting together in front of her chest. “I thought—I was _sure_ you were—”

 

Her voice hitches, and Lance leaves the sofa to go to her, running a soothing hand down her arm and bending in close to murmur something Arthur can’t hear. He turns away, not wanting to intrude on a private moment, and tries to pretend the smarting in his chest is only from having the breath knocked out of him. Morgana is watching him carefully.

 

“They’re right, you know,” she says. “We were all sure you were going to die. You _should_ have died.”

 

“Sorry to disappoint you, then,” Arthur retorts, and Morgana smacks him.

 

“Don’t be stupid,” she says. “That’s not what I meant.”

 

“Then what _did_ you mean?” Arthur asks. “Because you’re making even less sense than usual.”

 

Morgana sighs.

 

“Look, Arthur,” she says. “Don’t you understand? Something happened out there, something that was not…natural.” She meets his gaze squarely, and Arthur feels the tips of his fingers turning numb. “Something magical.”

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


_THEN_

 

Merlin’s obsession with magic started when he turned nine, and it was the first thing he and Arthur ever seriously fought over. Someone gave him a magic kit for his birthday as a kind of joke—Merlin the famous magician, ha ha—not realising the extent of Uther Pendragon’s hatred for anything remotely supernatural-related. He didn’t even let Arthur go trick-or-treating on Halloween, because for reasons known only to himself he refused to acknowledge the holiday existed. Naturally, this meant that Arthur was powerfully curious about everything magical, to the point where he disobeyed his father and kept associating with Merlin even after he took to using his Do-It-Yourself Abracadabra Kit all over the estate. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was when Merlin started insisting that the magic he could do was _real_.

 

“Don’t be an idiot, _Mer_ lin,” Arthur scoffed, because he was nearly ten and too old to believe in something so stupid. “Magic isn’t real. It’s all tricks and smoke and mirrors.”

 

“No, it isn’t,” Merlin insisted, his lower lip jutting out the way it did when he was going to be stubborn about something. “I’ll show you. Watch.”

 

He pulled a pencil out of his pocket and laid his palm out flat, staring at the instrument with intense concentration. Arthur wanted to scoff at him and call him a baby, but before he could muster an appropriate insult the pencil lifted off Merlin’s hand and hovered in the air, floating several inches above his palm. It shivered there for a moment—Merlin’s face screwed up into an expression of terrible effort—then it dropped back down and rolled off his hand onto the ground.

 

“See?” Merlin looked up, beaming. “It’s real. Magic is real.”

 

Arthur could only stare at him.

 

“You’re a freak and a liar,” he said finally. “Don’t come anywhere near me ever again.”

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


The three long, empty, Merlin-less weeks that ensued were some of the worst in Arthur’s life, but there was no way he could tell anyone that, least of all Merlin. Morgana, who had an uncanny way of knowing when Arthur had done something he was ashamed of, teased him mercilessly at every opportunity, trying to figure out the source of her brother’s ill temper.

 

“What did you do?” she demanded at last, when the second Merlin-free week dragged to a close. “Why isn’t he speaking to you?”

 

“ _I’m_ not speaking to _him_ ,” Arthur corrected her, not bothering to pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about. “And I’ll have you know I didn’t do anything. Merlin’s the one who’s being stupid.”

 

Morgana fixed him with a sceptical brow and folded her arms.

 

“ _Mer_ lin loves you,” she said. “And he’s going around looking like someone kicked his puppy. Of course you did something.”

 

“Shows what you know.”

 

She huffed with annoyance. “I know everything, Arthur Pendragon,” she said, and the scary thing was, it sounded like she meant it. “And I’m going to figure out what you’ve done and make you apologise, you’ll see if I don’t.”

 

Arthur was fairly sure she wouldn’t do either of those things — firstly, because Merlin wasn’t likely to tell on him, no matter how angry he was, and secondly, because he really hadn’t done anything wrong, damn it, no matter what his churning insides might tell him. Merlin was doing _magic_ , and he had lied to Arthur, tried to trick him into thinking it was real. Surely Merlin was the one who should be doing the apologising?

 

In the end, however, it was Arthur who caved first, running up to Merlin after class and walking home beside him as if nothing had happened. Merlin kept shooting sidelong glances in his direction, which Arthur studiously ignored, until at last he blurted:

 

“I’m not lying, you know.”

 

Arthur looked at him. Merlin was chewing on his lower lip and he looked as guilty as Arthur has been feeling, but also oddly determined. Arthur shoved him.

 

“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But you _are_ stupid.”

 

“And you’re a prat.”

 

“I’m still older than you,” Arthur said, as if that settled things.

 

Merlin stuck out his tongue at him, saying nothing, and after a while they went back to being Arthur-and-Merlin, best friends, inseparable, the way they’d always been. The magic kit disappeared into the netherworld of Merlin’s wardrobe and was never seen again.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


_NOW_

 

That evening, instead of going to sleep, Arthur lies awake and stares at the ceiling. It’s impossible, of course. Magic isn’t real; that afternoon had to have been just a fluke, the kind of lucky escape that just sort of happens sometimes without anyone being able to explain it. And yet. Arthur remembers the sensation of falling, the knowledge that there was no way he could possibly survive. He hadn’t been scared, just angry, because of _course_ the first time he actually managed to have some semblance of a normal winter vacation the damn thing would get him killed. And he’d thought…maybe…well, he hadn’t told anyone, because they’d think he was insane, _he_ even thought he was insane, but he’d almost thought he heard Merlin’s voice on the way down, calling Arthur’s name over the wind in his ears.

 

 _Something happened out there_ , Morgana had said. _Something that was not…natural_.

 

Arthur shivers and rolls over, pulling the covers up to his chin. Maybe if he just ignores it, he’ll wake up in the morning and find that none of it really happened after all.

  
  


 

* * *

 

 

IV

  


When the knocking on his window wakes him up a few hours later, Arthur assumes he’s still caught in the dream. He gets up in a daze, ignoring the cold to pad across the floor and pull back the curtains. Outside, a silvery moon is shining, unnaturally bright, outlining the snow-covered landscape in sharp relief. Frost dances over the windowpane as Arthur watches, forming, impossibly, pictures. An armoured knight gallops across a field full of ice, chasing after a frosty dragon with ice-crystals instead of flames spewing from its mouth. A young boy sits on a too-big throne, a crown of ice slipping over his eyes, holding a sword that is almost the size of his body. A wizard with a pointy hat and sparkling robes points a wand at another boy (or is it the same one?) and turns him into a frog, also made of ice, translucent and delicate as the branching patterns of lacework on ancient embroidery.

 

There is only one person Arthur knows who was there when he played those games; only one person who could share those memories.

 

“Merlin?” he whispers, holding out a hand and pressing his palm to the frozen windowpane. A gust of wind and the window clears, the frost melting too-rapidly as if from the heat of his palm, and then there’s just his name, written in sharp-edged, uncertain icicles mere inches from his fingers. _ARTHUR. I AM HERE_.

 

Arthur bolts.

 

He turns and scrambles away from the window, his palm burning cold with the imprint of the glass, heart thudding so hard beneath his breastbone he thinks briefly that it might burst, might shatter itself against the enclosure of his ribs. Morgana is right—he’s been carrying this guilt with him for too long, and it’s finally driven him mad; it’s the only explanation. No matter what Morgana herself suggested the day before, there's no way Merlin could be leaving messages for him in the frost on his window, firstly because that’s impossible and secondly because _Arthur_ _killed him_.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


Arthur isn’t quite sure where he’s going, but he knows he has to get away before he starts believing in his own delusions. The others are asleep, so he limps outside as quietly as he can, picking up the keys to Morgana’s Coupe from the side table as he ducks out into the night. He doesn’t bother with his coat or gloves, crunching through the freshly-fallen drifts to the car and turning up the heat full blast when he gets there.

 

There really aren’t many places he can go at this hour beyond the main lodge, but Arthur keeps driving anyway, one eye on the petrol gauge, the other on the slick black tarmac ahead of him. His hands are white-knuckled on the wheel. He doesn’t want to think about it, what happened, but at the same time he can’t get it out of his head, can’t stop the longing to hear Merlin’s voice just one last time. It’s stupid, he knows. He’s had a whole parade of very highly paid psychologists tell him as much, albeit in politer terms, but whenever he thinks he’s ready to put the past behind him the winter creeps in again and he panics, remembering the terrified expression on Merlin’s face as he’d died.

 

He’s still thinking about Merlin when the deer bounds onto the road in front of him, coming completely out of nowhere with its eyes gleaming gold in the light of his headlamps. Arthur swears, shocked, and wrenches the wheel, remembering too late his father’s admonitions about proper driving protocol on icy roads. The car fishtails, and Arthur’s world becomes a blur as he tips over the shoulder and skids down the embankment, pumping the brake to no effect until the vehicle finally comes to a crunching halt at the base of the incline.

 

For a breathless moment, everything is still. Arthur doesn’t move, doesn’t think he can, holding himself frozen until he can catch his breath. He’s bruised but not severely injured, the airbags having deployed in time to keep him from slamming his head against the wheel. Outside he can hear the groan and creak of ice and nothing else.

 

When he finally gathers his wits, Arthur’s first instinct is to reach for the ignition. The engine coughs a few times, then dies entirely with a scraping noise that bodes ill for its chances of recovery. Still, Arthur can’t think of anything else to do so he opens the door, stepping out into the cold to take a look under the hood. His torch is little use against the encroaching dark, but he doesn’t really need it to see the problem: the entire front end of the car is badly damaged, folded in on itself like a concertina from the impact. It’s unlikely that it will ever drive again, at least not without some serious repairs. Morgana is going to kill him.

 

It’s about then that it dawns on him that he’s in some serious trouble. No one knows he’s out here, he has no transport, no phone, and it’s fucking _freezing_ in the Alps in the middle of winter. If only he’d driven his own car to the mountains instead of relying on Morgana, he would have had his first aid kit and all of his supplies, but she had insisted he needed to stop worrying so much and like an idiot he had allowed himself to be goaded. He can’t even see any lights from here, nothing that would indicate his proximity to civilisation. The woods are eerily still, yet as Arthur stands there, rubbing his arms to ward off the chill, he can’t help feeling as if there’s someone watching him.

 

The cold is insidious. His fingers go stiff, then numb, and he takes to marching up and down to get his circulation going, wondering if he should risk trying to find his way back to the chalet. It’s a steep climb, and he’s not entirely sure of the route; if he gets lost in the snow in the dark, then his chances of survival will rapidly diminish. Even if there is—something—out there, he’s pretty sure he is better off staying where he is and trying to keep warm than setting off into the snow in the dark. Isn’t that what they always say when you get lost—stay where you are and someone will find you?

 

Reluctantly, he gets back into the car, looking helplessly out into the darkness. Just in case, he tries the engine again, gunning it with the accelerator flat to the floor, but the result is more of the same: still nothing. He shivers and huddles down in the seat, knees drawn up tight to his chest. He’s so cold his bones ache, so tired it’s almost too much effort to think. Morgana and the others will miss him in the morning and come looking. He only has to survive a few more hours. His breath mists the air in front of him, forming condensation on the windowpane, and his head nods forward, his eyes slipping closed even as he reminds himself that he mustn’t fall asleep.

 

Outside it is very dark, and very cold, and very still.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


Arthur wakes with a start an indeterminate amount of time later, his head pillowed painfully against the steering-wheel and his neck braced at an awkward angle. At first, he doesn’t know what it is that has woken him. There’s a strangely bitter taste in his mouth, a smell like ozone, and he moves stiffly as he sits up, so many parts of his body gone to sleep that it’s a miracle he can still function. Then the sound comes again: slow and deliberate, a three-note _knock, knock, knock_ against the window of the car.

 

Arthur sits up abruptly and stares at the fogged-up windscreen, certain even as he does so that this is not a potential rescuer, searching for survivors, or his salvation come traipsing through the snow. No. This is something else.

 

Some _one_ else.

 

There’s a shadow on the glass, faint but distinct. Breath caught in his throat, Arthur scrambles to open the driver’s side door, fingers fumbling to work the latch in their deadened state. His heart is thundering wildly as he hears it again— _knock, knock, knock_ —and then the door gives way and he’s out, lurching into the snow and almost falling to his knees before propelling himself up and away from the thing with all the strength he has in him. As he turns one last time, unable to stop himself from checking for pursuit, the ground beneath him seems to shift underfoot, and there’s a loud cracking sound that Arthur knows all too well; a sound he has heard in his dreams every night for the last five years.

 

He barely has a moment to think _shit I’m standing on a river_ before the surface shatters under him and he’s in the water, the frigid liquid closing over his head and tumbling him into darkness. The irony of it is almost as painful as the cold; that he should die like this, after all this time, seems such a waste after everything that has happened that he refuses to believe it. He kicks out with both legs, clawing at the water with his fingers and palms, reaching for the smudge of lighter darkness that he hopes must be the surface. He can still hear the splintering of the ice as he fell through, and in his ears, a familiar voice:

 

_Arthur, you’re going to be fine._

 

_Arthur, I’ve got you._

 

_Arthur, I am here._

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


What happens next is—well, it’s hard to explain. In fact, there is no explanation, not really, not one that will satisfy his sister, anyway, because Arthur is _gone_ , he’s under the water with his lungs cramping and his skin searing and there’s no way he’s getting out under his own power. Except…somehow he does. Later, Uther decides that it must have been superhuman strength borne of adrenaline, no matter how many hints Morgana drops that there might be a more _supernatural_ explanation for everything that happened that night. The doctors chalk it up to blind luck, and even Gwen and the others seem cautiously sceptical, unwilling to believe in _two_ miracles in almost as many days.

 

Morgana’s right, though. Arthur doesn’t want to think about how the man who saved his life had Merlin’s face, or what Merlin’s face might look like if he’d ever had the chance to grow up. He doesn’t want to think about how the man’s hands had been colder than the ice, how his touch had left curls of frost on Arthur’s hoodie like fingerprints, how he had looked Arthur right in the eye and smiled as if Arthur were the best thing he’d ever seen in his life.

 

He doesn’t want to think about it, but he has to, because it _happened_ , and he needs to know what it means.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


The night he gets back from the hospital, dressed in dry clothes and finally alone, Arthur leaves the warmth of the fire and goes to the window, trying to pretend his heart isn’t beating double-time in his chest. He opens it just slightly, letting in a tendril of icy air, and looks out into the night.

 

“Merlin?”

 

The windowpane crackles in response.

 

_ARTHUR. I AM HERE._

  
  


 

* * *

 

  
V

  


_THEN_

 

It wasn’t Merlin’s idea to go out on the ice. Arthur had always been the reckless one, especially when he was angry about something, and the day it all happened he was mad enough to spit. Afterwards, he couldn’t remember what he’d been angry about — all he knew was that he’d wanted to get away from it all: from his father, his sister, his impending A-levels and the nail-biting wait to see which path his future would take. Merlin had lagged behind, uncertain, but Arthur had steamrollered over his objections and made a beeline straight for the lake.

 

“Come on, _Mer_ lin,” he said, putting enough contempt in his voice to make it a challenge. “Don’t tell me you’re scared.”

 

“Scared, no. Cautious, yes.” Merlin folded his arms and glared at him, planting his feet firmly on the safety of the bank. “It’s not even that cold yet, Arthur, the lake might not be properly frozen.”

 

“It’s practically the middle of winter,” Arthur scoffed. “Of course it’s frozen. Besides, don’t you want to go ice skating with me?”

 

He had pouted then, the sort of pity-me expression that always used to turn girls to mush and twist teachers around his little finger. Merlin had been immune to that particular brand of Pendragon charm when they were younger, but over the past year or so Arthur had become conscious of something new in the way Merlin watched him, the way he would sometimes duck his head and blush when Arthur turned the full force of his smile in his direction. He would go red to the tips of his ears if he walked in on Arthur changing, which happened somewhat more often than pure chance might have dictated (persistent Arthur might be, but subtle he was not), and he tended to lose his train of thought in the middle of an argument when Arthur looked at him _just so_ , or curled his hand around Merlin’s wrist to link their fingers together.

 

The knowledge that he had power over Merlin — if you could call it that — was something he understood subconsciously as being a natural corollary of the power Merlin had over him: the way Merlin could curb his more bombastic impulses with a simple frown, and the near-constant desire to impress him that had been the bane of Arthur’s life ever since they’d met. He had known how he felt about Merlin for a while, but the awareness that Merlin might like him back was still new and nascent, a fragile hope Arthur was trying vainly to ignore lest he snuff it out before it had the chance to grow. Still, he wasn’t above taking advantage of it when it suited him, and he could already tell that Merlin was going to give in.

 

“Come on,” he said again, shoving the skates into Merlin’s arms, and he didn’t look back as he stepped out onto the ice.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


For a while, it was everything Arthur had hoped that it might be. They had the place to themselves, most of the other students either having gone away for the holidays or preferring to remain at home in the warm, and the air was just the right degree of freezing to make it a pleasure to move, the sweat chilling against their skin as they carved long figure-eights into the surface of the lake.

 

Of the two of them, Arthur had always been the more athletically inclined; he was the one who made the football team and played cricket on weekends, who went skiing on winter break and generally spent as much of his time outdoors as he could. Merlin had always been the skinny, artsy one with the big ears and weird hair, but he had filled out some in the intervening years, a fact which Arthur noticed and appreciated on a daily basis. On the ice, Merlin was no longer clumsy and awkward but confident, even beautiful, his face flushed red and laughing with the exertion. Arthur loved watching him like that—but then, Arthur had always loved watching Merlin. He’d just never had the courage to actually _tell_ him that.

 

“Watch this!” he said, putting his head down to gather some speed. It wasn’t supposed to be anything special — Arthur had never learned anything more complicated than a basic toe loop, no matter how many times Morgana had teased him — but he felt Merlin’s eyes on him anyway and it made him want to try something different. He heard but didn’t listen to Merlin’s shout of alarm, focusing instead on keeping his feet together as he spun, and then pulling himself together for the landing; he might even have made it, too, if he hadn’t struck a small indentation in the ice that made his left skate slide out from under him at the crucial moment. He went down hard, his head slamming back on the ice so suddenly it brought tears to his eyes, and all the breath rushed out of him.

 

Merlin was already skating in his direction, his face a mask of concern, when Arthur threw up a hand to halt him, his stomach twisting in fear. Merlin slewed to a stop at the same moment, his eyes and mouth both comically wide as he registered what had happened.

 

They both heard it at the same time, the worst sound that a pair of seventeen-year-olds alone in the middle of a frozen lake could hear: the sharp but audible _crack_ of breaking ice.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


“Stay back,” Arthur warned, trying to hold himself as still as possible. The ice shifted ominously beneath him, and his heart leapt painfully in his chest. “Just…stay there. There’s nothing you can do.”

 

“I’m not just going to leave you!” Merlin snapped, stopping a few feet away from the largest crack. He sounded angry, but the expression on his face was closer to terror. “There is no way in _hell_ , Arthur.”

 

“You have to,” Arthur said steadily. They were out near the centre of the lake, a long way from the shore, and beyond that there were several miles to go before the first houses started to appear on the horizon. Still, if Merlin could get back to the road and drive into town, there was a chance that _maybe_ he could be back in time to help—

 

“What are you doing?”

 

Merlin had lowered himself down to the ice and was taking off his skates, his face set into a grim expression that Arthur knew and did not like.

 

“I’m going to rescue you, obviously,” Merlin said, tugging off the second skate and shoving it aside. His feet looked oddly vulnerable clad only in socks, sliding dangerously over the slick surface. “Hold still. I’m going to make my way towards you.”

 

“Merlin, no.” But Merlin was already inching forward, lying down on his belly with his legs spread out to redistribute the weight. Arthur’s breath seemed stuck in his throat, his entire body frozen as he watched Merlin’s progress towards him.

 

“You’re going to be fine,” Merlin was saying; whispering, really, less a statement than a prayer. “I swear, we’re both going to be fine. Now stretch out your arms towards me.”

 

Arthur did as he was told, mirroring Merlin’s position and lowering himself cautiously onto his stomach. The ice creaked warningly beneath him, another crack snaking along the space between the two of them, and for an instant Arthur couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, certain that if he so much as flinched the ice would give way and he’d be plunged into the deadly water below.

 

“Don’t look at the ice, Arthur, look at me.” Merlin’s familiar voice snapped him back to the present. “Look at me. That’s it. I’m here. I’ve got you. You’re going to be fine, just keep going.”

 

Arthur let out his breath and began to move, Merlin doing the same opposite him, his face white with strain. He stretched out his arms as far as they would go, concentrating only on closing the gap between them, on getting to safety. Their fingertips touched, then their palms, and then Arthur was clinging to Merlin’s hands for dear life, his breath coming out in rough pants that he refused to admit were sobs. “What now?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice even. “What are we going to do now?”

 

“On the count of three, I’m going to spin you off to the side,” Merlin said. His eyes were on Arthur’s face, his voice surprisingly composed under the circumstances. “Do you trust me?”

 

Arthur nodded. “Of course I do, but— ”

 

“Good. Then when I say go, push off with your knees as hard as you can. I know your skates will make it awkward, but you’re going to need the momentum if you want to get out of the way in time.”

 

“What about you?”

 

“I’ll be right behind you. I’m not going to leave you, Arthur, I promise.”

 

It didn’t make sense to Arthur, even then—given the angle, he was pretty sure they’d need a miracle if they were going to escape before the ice gave way—but Merlin seemed so certain, so confident in his assessment that Arthur went along with it, his heavy-weighted feet scrabbling for purchase as he waited for Merlin’s signal.

 

“Ready?” Merlin asked. At Arthur’s nod, he began to count down. “Three…two…”

 

He didn’t say “one.” Later, after yet another psychiatrist had assured him that that was what he must have heard, Arthur wrote down the word Merlin had said and looked it up. The closest he could find was _Àwende_ , which meant ‘exchange’ or ‘avert’ in Old English, a language Arthur could have sworn that neither of them knew. Merlin’s voice echoed across the frozen lake, and without warning the world seemed to tilt and spin around them, Arthur’s fingers tight at Merlin’s wrists as he was dragged forcibly across the icy surface.

 

He wasn’t entirely certain what happened next. He heard the sound of splintering as he moved and braced himself for the shock of cold that would surely follow, his muscles tightening as he prepared to sink or swim, but a moment later he was on solid ground again, struggling to catch his breath as a wave of dizziness washed over him. When he opened his eyes, it was to find the landscape had changed: instead of facing towards the bank, as he had been before, Arthur was sprawled with his face towards the centre of the lake, and in front of him Merlin lay poised above the breaking ice, his mouth slack and terrified as the surface fractured under him.

 

For an instant, everything was still, the afternoon sunlight turning Merlin’s pupils gold as they stared into each other’s eyes; then, with a sudden _crack_ , the ice gave way, and Arthur felt Merlin’s arms slip from his grasp as he slid, feet-first, into the water.  

  


 

* * *

  


VI

  


_NOW_

 

Merlin is paler than Arthur remembers.

 

He’s also taller, gangly where Arthur is muscular, rangy where he is compact. His eyes are even bluer and his hair is shorter, but his ears are still ridiculous.

 

He materialises out of a gust of snow and steps barefoot through Arthur’s window, tiny frost-trails appearing in his wake.

 

“Hello, Arthur,” he says, and Arthur shudders.

 

“How are you doing this?” he demands, foregoing a more conventional greeting. “What are you—— are you a ghost?”

 

“I don’t know what I am,” Merlin says with a shrug. He doesn’t seem altogether bothered by it, but then, he’s had several years to get used to the idea, whereas Arthur’s only had minutes. “Gaius says I’m not a proper ghost, but a winter spirit. It’s hard to explain, exactly, but it’s actually kind of cool.”

 

He seems to realise the pun a moment after Arthur does, and his face splits into a wide grin. “Cool, get it?”

 

Arthur snorts. “You’re such an idiot.”

 

“And you’re a clotpole,” Merlin retorts promptly. “Good to know some things haven’t changed.”

 

“Yeah, well.” Arthur doesn’t know what to say. “Some things have.”

 

Merlin’s smile fades.

 

“A lot of things,” he agrees, sounding sad. “You, especially.”

 

“And you.” They look at each other. Ice crystals are spreading beneath Merlin’s feet, turning the polished floor into a skating rink. Arthur is only a short distance from the fire, but he can still feel the chill sinking into his bones, as if Merlin is somehow leeching all of the warmth from the room. The reality of it is so shocking that the moment seems to crystallise, until there is only one real thought in Arthur’s head.

 

“I missed you.”

 

Merlin’s face breaks into a smile again, and Arthur’s heart squeezes at the familiarity of that dopey grin. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear you say that.”

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


“I found my way home a few weeks after the funeral,” Merlin explains, once Arthur has put out the fire and they’re sitting together on his bed. In the pale light from the open window, Merlin is white and glittering, like some kind of snow sculpture come to life. “Scared the hell out of my mum and Gaius, I can tell you, when I showed up on their doorstep out of the blue. They knew right away I wasn’t—you know. Alive. Even though they never found my body. But it took a while for me to convince them I wasn’t a ghost, and even longer before Mum would let me out of her sight.”

 

“They never told anybody?”

 

Merlin shakes his head. “My first thought was to come and find you, but Mum said you’d moved away, and she wasn’t sure how to get in touch with you.”

 

“Dad thought it would be a good idea, after you—after,” Arthur says, swallowing hard. He has very little memory of the first few weeks after Merlin had died—after he _thought_ Merlin had died—having been too caught up in his own guilt to pay attention to much else. He remembers the move, though, remembers how driving away from Ealdor had felt like leaving part of himself behind. At the time, it had been a part he had been desperate to get rid of, certain that his own stupidity and recklessness had cost him his best friend. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

 

Merlin knocks his shoulder companionably, and it’s like being buffeted by a sudden shower of snow. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “How could you? It’s not like this sort of thing happens all the time.”

 

“I guess not.” Arthur rubs at his arm, chilled, and wonders if it would be impolite to fetch a blanket. “How did you—when did you figure it out, what you were?”

 

“It was Gaius who worked it out. He says I’m a guardian.”

 

“Of what?”

 

“Of magic.” Merlin holds out a hand, and with a breath summons a small snow flurry, a miniature dragon made of snow that coils upwards from his palm before it disappears. Arthur sucks in a sharp breath, the cold air making his chest ache.

 

“It’s real,” he says, choked. “Magic is _real._ I always thought—I thought you were trying to be funny.”

 

“Of course it’s real.” Merlin shoots him a mischievous grin. “I told you, didn’t I? Not my fault you couldn’t see what was right in front of your face.” He sobers a little, and some of the sadness comes back into his eyes. “I did try to talk to you, you know. Mum and Gaius, they figured you wouldn’t believe them if they just wrote and told you, so once Mum found out where you were I followed you to Tintagel. But you wouldn’t let me in.”

 

Arthur stares at him, thinking of all the nights he’d dreamed there was someone knocking on his windowpane. “That was you?”

 

“How many other elemental guardians have you met?”

 

Arthur shrugs. “A few,” he lies, and Merlin laughs. Arthur’s stomach flips over. Trying to control himself, he picks at the bedspread, lifting a thin sheet of ice from the fabric and watching as it turns brittle and melts at the warmth of his touch. He wonders if Merlin would melt and disappear if he touched him. He wonders if Merlin ever misses being warm, if he’s angry at Arthur for having all that taken away from him. Does he regret the choice he made?

 

When he looks up, Merlin is watching him.

 

“What is it?” he asks, his voice soft.

 

The word are out before Arthur can figure out how to stop them. “Why did you do it?”

 

“Do what?”

 

“Save me.” Arthur struggles to clear his throat. “Why did you save me? You should have just left me to drown.”

 

Now it’s Merlin’s turn to look away, something like a blush colouring his cheeks. Some of the ice crystals chime faintly as he shakes his head.

 

“I couldn’t do that,” he said. “Any more than you could have left me. I couldn’t just abandon you when I had the power to save you.”

 

“But I did,” Arthur said, the words spilling out now after years of keeping them to himself. “I abandoned you. You went into the water and I ran, and by the time I got back— ”

 

“You went to get _help_ , Arthur, that was the only thing you could have done!”

 

“And it killed you!” Arthur snaps. Merlin rears back as if struck, and suddenly it is all too much: the accident, the hospital, Morgana’s suspicions and the others' sidelong glances. Arthur turns away almost violently, pushing off the bed and stalking towards the open window so that he won’t have to look at Merlin anymore.

 

Outside, the snow seems strangely peaceful, entirely at odds with the emotions now burning in his chest.

 

“Is that why you never go out in the snow anymore?” Merlin asks, his voice very quiet. “You used to love the winter, I remember.”

 

“No,” Arthur says, because it looks like he’s still stupid and reckless after all. “I used to love you.”

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


Merlin’s kiss is like the first snowflake in winter: gentle and barely there, with a faint trace of frost. It still steals Arthur’s breath away. Slowly, giving Merlin ample time to change his mind if he wants to, Arthur shifts closer and returns the gesture, nudging at Merlin’s cold cheek with his nose, brushing his lips across the corner of Merlin’s mouth. Merlin gives a small sigh and yields to him, lips parting to allow Arthur’s tongue to flick against his own, and Arthur can’t stop kissing him: his face, his neck, his shoulders.

 

“Arthur,” Merlin says finally, breathless but disapproving. “If you don’t stop teasing me I swear I am going to create a blizzard in the middle of your bloody bedroom, you horrible prat.”

 

Arthur laughs and ducks in to kiss him again, this time catching at his lips with intent. Merlin lets out a happy sound and meets him stroke for stroke, sliding his hands under Arthur’s turtleneck and yanking it off with very little finesse but a great deal of enthusiasm. Arthur lets himself be manhandled back onto the bed, snatching kisses as he goes, and if it weren’t for the coldness of Merlin’s skin he might almost believe that this was—that they could—

 

“Merlin,” he says quietly, as Merlin pauses to pull off his own clothes and discard them on the floor with Arthur’s. “Merlin, wait. We can’t.”

 

Merlin pauses, the garments dropping from his hands. “I thought we already were.”

 

“I _mean_ , can you even…” Arthur stops. Merlin’s skin is beautiful, pale and perfect like frozen milk, and up until that moment he had assumed it was all as cold and lifeless as his hands, but he was wrong. The two spots where Arthur is gripping his biceps are less dead-looking, more flesh-toned than the rest, almost as if the proximity of his warmth were causing Merlin’s fragile cold to thaw and melt away.

 

“Merlin,” Arthur says again, in an entirely different tone.

 

Merlin follows his gaze, eyes going wide when he sees the change in his skin.

 

“Touch me,” he demands. “Somewhere else—my chest. Anywhere.”

 

Arthur does as he’s told, releasing Merlin’s arms to trail his fingers over the exposed flesh. A faint blush seems to follow wherever he lays his hands, like slow heat on a summer’s day.

 

“Oh my god,” Arthur breathes. “Do you think…?”

 

“Kiss me,” Merlin says. “Come on, Arthur. Do it.”

 

Half frightened, half elated, Arthur tugs Merlin down so they’re chest to chest, mouth to mouth, kissing him hungrily and letting his hands roam where they willed, seeking out new areas of skin to explore. It’s different this time: less like kissing an icicle, more like kissing a man, Merlin’s lips going soft and pliant under his where before they had been cool and still, Merlin’s breath no longer raising goose pimples on his arms. Arthur hears himself make an inarticulate sound at the back of his throat and struggles to remove Merlin’s trousers and pants without taking his hands off him, letting Merlin tend to his own clothing as best he can. Once naked, they stare at each other openly, pupils dilated, breathing coming quick and shallow and hot.

 

“Did you know it would do that?” Arthur asks, staring at the slow blossom of heat under Merlin’s skin. “Did you think—?”

 

But Merlin is already shaking his head, eyes wide and stunned. “No, I had no idea. It shouldn’t be possible. I’m dead, I can’t— "

 

“You _can_ ,” Arthur says, cutting across him. He feels giddy with it, half-laughing at the realisation. “You’re magic. You’re actual, fucking magic. You can do anything.”

  
  
  


 

* * *

   


VIII

  


He reels Merlin in by his hips and kisses him again, nosing his way down Merlin’s throat to the junction between neck and shoulder, mouthing love bites into the skin. Merlin moans, clutching at him, grinding his hard cock against Arthur’s thigh, and Arthur finds he doesn’t care if this is a hallucination or delusion or just some kind of very vivid dream because he needs Merlin, he always has, and if this is the way he gets to have him then he’ll take it, caution and good sense be damned. He shoves Merlin gently back onto the bed and follows him down, needing to be as close as possible, and Merlin responds in kind, letting out tiny sounds as he struggles to find a position that’s close enough and fails, even though his legs are hooked around Arthur’s waist, his fingers tangled in Arthur’s hair.

 

“I’ve missed you,” Arthur whispers, clinging to him. Merlin rocks upwards into him, kissing his chin, his jaw, his neck.

 

“I missed you too,” he says. “Half the time I didn’t even remember why—I forgot things, after a while, I don’t think I really existed when it wasn’t winter, I just knew that I was looking for you but you never came— ”

 

Arthur cuts him off with a kiss, then another. He wants to explain that he’d felt that way too, only worse. How he’d had nightmares every winter of Merlin under the ice, drowning, his accusing blue eyes staring up at Arthur from beneath the surface. He wants to tell Merlin everything he was never able to, but he settles for a slightly breathless, “Can I—do you want me to—?”

 

“Please,” Merlin gasps. He relinquishes his grip on Arthur’s waist to let him get up, and Arthur heads for his suitcase, hoping he still has some condoms and lube _somewhere_ in spite of the fact that his sex life has been rather arid of late. He can see Merlin watching him from where he’s scooted up the mattress, body splayed out on the covers like an obscene snow angel, his eyes not flat and dead like in Arthur’s nightmares but bright and aware. Seeing Arthur’s gaze on him, Merlin reaches down and strokes his hard cock lazily, not looking away, and Arthur fumbles with the zipper, his hands turning rubbery and tremulous with desire. Merlin smirks at him, shameless, and keeps going, teasing Arthur with each slow motion of his hand.

 

Finally, Arthur finds what he’s looking for in the back pocket of his jeans and returns to the bed, leaning down to kiss a trail from Merlin’s lips down to his belly. His whole body appears flushed with heat, now, the icy pallor banished for good beneath healthy, living skin, and Arthur noses at one hip for a moment, marvelling at the change, before taking Merlin into his mouth and making the other man grunt, arching upwards off the bed.

 

“Ah—ah—Arthur!”

 

Arthur smirks around Merlin’s cock, and begins to slowly coax him to full hardness, licking and sucking as he busily coats the fingers of his right hand with lube in preparation for the next stage of his seduction. Merlin is making small noises above him, both hands fisted in the duvet, his eyes closed as he concentrates on Arthur’s touch. There is still something about him that seems strangely ethereal, as if he still weren’t entirely human, but Arthur’s beyond questioning his own sanity now. This is real. _Merlin_ is real, writhing against him, his face screwed up in pleasure/pain as Arthur presses the first finger inside him. By whatever magic this has come about, Arthur can no longer deny that this is all he’s ever wanted for the two of them, ever since he was old enough to understand what their relationship could be.

 

Arthur takes his time, lavishing Merlin with attention, gently opening him up wider and wider until Merlin is gasping above him, tiny wrecked-sounding sobs which contain Arthur’s name and a surprising variety of curse-words, but not much else.

 

“Please—please, Arthur, please— _fuck_ ,” Merlin pants, shuddering as Arthur gives his fingers a little twist inside him. “When did you get to be so good at this?”

 

Arthur smirks against the inside of his thigh. “You’ve been gone a while, or you’d know that I’m considered something of an expert.”

 

“By who, you, yourself and I?” Merlin asks, but there’s no malice in it, not when he’s being systematically reduced to jelly by Arthur’s determined hands. “God, would you just— ”

 

“Ah ah,” Arthur says, chiding. “I want this to last.”

 

“Fuck,” Merlin says eloquently. His head flops back against the bed, bouncing a little, hair wild and dark with sweat, and Arthur looks at him, feeling overwhelmed yet again that they could be here like this, together, after so long. His own cock is painfully hard, now, leaking pre-cum all over his stomach, but he meant it when he said he wants this to last; to have this much is a gift, and Arthur dare not guess at whether it will ever happen again, or if Merlin will even still exist in the morning.

 

Before long, however, Arthur finds that the decision is taken out of his hands. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Merlin somehow manages to find the condom Arthur had left on the bed, and when Arthur next leans up to kiss him, he takes advantage of the shift in their positions to flip Arthur onto his back and straddle him, condom packet held triumphantly up over his head.

 

“Ha,” he says, tearing it open. Arthur watches in astonishment as Merlin deftly slides it onto his cock with both hands, twisting his wrist a little around the base before letting go. “I’ll teach you the meaning of slow, Arthur Pendragon.”

 

“You will not,” Arthur protests, trying valiantly to avert the inevitable, but Merlin silences him with a kiss, and he finds it’s more trouble than it’s worth to try to divert him now he has the bit between his teeth. Besides, Merlin is touching him, his cool hands sliding down Arthur’s chest, and Arthur finds himself suddenly quite unable to resist, hypnotised beneath the slow, steady stroke of it, the gentleness with which Merlin handles him. He tips his head back under Merlin’s caresses, his eyes closing, and almost doesn’t notice when Merlin draws back a little, his weight shifting on Arthur’s legs as he repositions himself, one hand braced on Arthur’s abdomen. Finally, Merlin’s hand finds Arthur’s cock and guides it between his legs with a small sound of satisfaction, using gravity to help him push past that first hesitation.

 

“Oh shit,” Arthur hisses, his eyes flying open. Merlin grins down at him, his cheeks flushed and beautiful, and Arthur almost comes right then, just from the sight of him. Merlin sinks down further, burying Arthur deep inside his body with a slow, determined flexing of his hips, his back arched taut with the tension in his muscles, and Arthur holds himself still with great effort, focusing on his breathing, until Merlin bottoms out. Merlin leans in towards him, kissing him slow and messy, the friction of his change in position making Arthur whimper and thrust upward in spite of himself.

 

“Ah, ah,” Merlin whispers mockingly, his arms braced either side of Arthur’s head. “I thought we were taking this slow?”

 

“Fuck you,” Arthur grunts, reaching up to grip Merlin’s waist and thrust again with determination, shocking a filthy moan from Merlin’s lips.

 

“That’s the idea,” Merlin quips, panting, and after that it becomes a kind of competition between them, who can tease the other to the brink the fastest and keep him there. Arthur’s muscles are trembling, sweat soaking the sheets beneath him as he drags Merlin’s mouth down to his for another panting, desperate kiss, but it’s Merlin who comes first in the end, with a cry that sounds equal parts exhilarated and, oddly, surprised. His body clenches around Arthur’s cock, and the compression is enough to send him hurtling over the edge as well, his hips bucking up helplessly as he comes buried deep inside Merlin’s body.

 

It takes him a while to come down from the high, so he doesn’t immediately notice how quiet Merlin has become, how very still he’s sitting, until his own breathing slows and his heart stops pounding in his ears. He opens his eyes to find Merlin still braced above him, his eyes gone wide and one hand splayed at the base of his throat.

 

“Merlin?” Arthur asks, immediately alert. He pushes himself up on one elbow, the sweat starting to chill unpleasantly against his skin, and catches at Merlin’s arm. “What’s wrong?”

 

Merlin shakes his head, grabbing Arthur’s hand and pressing the palm of it flat against his chest without uttering a single word. Beneath the skin, Arthur can feel his heart thundering like an express train, and it takes a moment before he understands.

 

“You’re— ”

 

“Alive,” Merlin says, his shell-shocked gaze meeting Arthur’s incredulous one. “I think—I can feel my heart.”

  
  
  


 

* * *

   


IX

  


_THEN_

 

Arthur figured out that he was in love with Merlin the summer after he turned fifteen, a few months before Morgana went away to university.

 

It wasn’t a particularly earth-shattering revelation. The two of them were sitting in the garden, Merlin reading a book and Arthur leaning against the tree beside him, enjoying the sensation of having nowhere important to be now that school had let out for good. Merlin had been smiling — later, Arthur decided that was an important detail. He’d wanted Arthur to listen to something he had been reading and was speaking aloud in a calm, clear voice, and Arthur had looked at him and felt something immense and tender rise up in his chest, a sensation so overwhelming that his hands began to shake and the piece of grass he had been shredding between his fingernails drifted unheeded to the ground.

 

It was only Merlin being Merlin. There was nothing about that moment which, in hindsight, ought to have stood out to him at all, certainly nothing which was any different from any other day. And yet, Arthur knew at once that things had changed between them, if only because he could no longer ignore what had been staring him right in the face.

 

Merlin stopped reading and looked at him, frowning. "Arthur? Are you all right?”

 

“Fine,” Arthur said, trying to give the impression that his world hadn’t just upended itself without warning. “I’m fine, why do you ask?”

 

Merlin gave a funny little smile and closed the book. He looked a little disappointed. “You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve been saying, have you?”

 

“Sorry.” Arthur could hardly deny it. “It’s not that I’m not interested, I just…I got distracted.”

 

“Right.” Merlin rolled his eyes. “I should have known better than to expect you to appreciate poetry, anyway.”

 

“Hey! I appreciate poetry as much as the next guy,” Arthur said, faking indignation.

 

“Which is to say not at all.”

 

Arthur shoved him, and Merlin laughed, squirming away as Arthur's hands found his ribs and began to tickle. Arthur pretended to be angry for a moment longer, until one particularly ungainly kick of Merlin’s feet knocked him back on his arse, at which point he gave in and started laughing as well.

 

Later, he looked up the book Merlin had been reading and found the poem in question, putting it together from the fragments he could remember. It was a beautiful poem, but difficult to understand. He wondered what had moved Merlin to read it aloud and whether it contained any hidden meaning; but if there was anything to it which suggested that Merlin was secretly in love with him, too, Arthur couldn’t find it, and had to content himself with wishful thinking.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


He tried to keep it to himself. He was pretty sure Merlin only saw him as a friend, and he wasn’t about to lose the best thing in his life just because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. He had a couple of girlfriends — which worked out about as well as you’d expect — and a boy in his French class asked him out once but he said no, cheeks burning, too afraid of what his father might say to be anything but devastating in his rejection.

 

Merlin found him afterwards, lurking behind the bike sheds and listening to music on an iPod he’d lifted from the lost and found, and stopped in front of him with his arms folded, a frown on his face.

 

“You could have been nicer, you know,” he said. “It’s not like it’s a crime to be gay.”

 

“I know it’s not a crime. I don’t care about that.”

 

“So?”

 

Arthur pulled one of the earbuds out of his ear. “So I don’t like him,” he said, not bothering to pull his punches. “I don’t want to go out with him. I don’t have to pretend I do just to make him feel good about himself.”

 

“Wow, that’s unexpectedly kind and charitable of you,” Merlin said, sarcasm making his mouth tight. “There is such a thing as basic human decency, you know, although apparently you don’t have any.”

 

They had argued, then, and badly, and Arthur spent the next few weeks angry at everything, up to and including Merlin himself. Even his father had noticed his bad temper, and he had been grounded twice for mouthing off before he broke and ended up outside of Merlin’s window after midnight, throwing pebbles at the glass to get him to let him in.

 

“I’m gay,” he said, without preamble, and he watched Merlin’s face change from annoyance to shock to understanding. “I’m gay, and I’m fucking scared, Merlin. My father would disown me if he knew.”

 

Merlin opened his arms and Arthur went to him immediately, wrapping himself around Merlin’s body and holding on tight. Merlin petted his hair and made him tea, then let him stay over and curl up in bed with him, stroking soothing patterns across his shoulder-blades. Arthur fell asleep with his back pressed up against Merlin’s chest, the comforting sound of Merlin’s heartbeat strong and steady in his ears.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


_NOW_

 

Afterwards, Merlin curls against Arthur’s side, head resting on his chest, and Arthur wraps an arm around him to keep him there, turning to bury his face in Merlin’s hair. He smells faintly of pine and something else, a clean, fresh scent that makes Arthur think of snow. His skin is still cool to the touch, but not so much so that it feels unnatural. Arthur tucks the blankets tightly around them, aware suddenly of the chill in the air and the open window, and Merlin shifts closer still, murmuring something indistinct. His hand splays protectively over Arthur’s chest, and Arthur wonders if he’s worried, if it’s an attempt to keep himself grounded. He hardly dares close his eyes in case it all turns out to be a dream, but he’s almost drifted off in spite of himself when he feels Merlin stir, then hears him laugh softly almost to himself.

 

“What?” he asks, the corners of his mouth tipping upwards at the feel of Merlin’s chest vibrating. “What’s so funny?”

 

“I just had a thought,” Merlin says, stretching against him for a moment before settling closer still, his legs tangling with Arthur’s own. “Morgana is going to _freak_ when she finds out.”

  
  
  


 

* * *

  


X

  
  


Morgana, of course, doesn’t so much freak out as take one look at Merlin and declare that she’s known something magical was going on all along. Once she’s finished gloating, however, she volunteers to make their excuses to the rest of the group, on the proviso that Merlin will teach her some of his magic tricks. He agrees, laughing, and for the next few days, he and Arthur barely leave the chalet, holing up in Arthur’s bedroom and only coming out for food and other supplies. Ostensibly, Arthur is still recovering, and Merlin is introduced as his formerly estranged boyfriend who rushed to be at his bedside as soon as he heard the news. In actual fact, however, Arthur doesn’t have much interest in recuperating, and instead spends most of his time with Merlin: talking to Merlin, kissing Merlin, learning the map of his body over and over again.

 

Merlin doesn’t say much, at first. He listens to Arthur talk, running his fingers through his hair and studying his face like he might forget what it looks like if he turns away. Arthur tells him everything about the past five years that he can remember, and this time, when he wakes up from the dream again, Merlin is there, eyes open, chasing the nightmares away.

 

Merlin is always watching him, and it’s not until he’s helping Arthur button his shirt in preparation for reentering the outside world that it occurs to Arthur he has no idea what happens next.

 

“You are coming back with us, right?” Arthur asks, suddenly afraid. “You’re not just going to disappear or something?”

 

“Of course not,” Merlin says, looking amused. He cups Arthur’s cheek and kisses him, letting his fingers trail distractingly down Arthur’s neck and under the collar of his shirt. “I won’t ever leave you by choice, Arthur, you know that.”

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


As December moves gradually into January, Arthur struggles to return to the familiar rhythms of study and research. He’s in his final year at Cambridge and he can’t afford to slack off now, not if he wants to graduate with the honours his father expects, but it’s hard to care about politics and economics with Merlin sitting beside him with his feet in Arthur’s lap, or leaning against his shoulder to mutter filthy things into Arthur’s ear. He’d moved in with Arthur when they got back to London, neither of them wanting to go through the pretence of two different flats even if he’d had the money to acquire one, and aside from a joyful reunion with Hunith and the uncomfortable moment when Uther had accused him of being an imposter to his face, there had been little to disturb the quiet equilibrium they had begun to develop together. Arthur has never been happier, not since the moment the ice closed over Merlin’s head and he was gone forever.

 

He ought to have known it wouldn’t last.

 

It’s getting towards the end of February when Arthur starts to think maybe something isn’t right. Merlin is more restless than usual, sleeping fitfully, often getting up in the middle of the night to stand at the window and look blankly out into the dark. Watching Merlin one night as he stands with his back to Arthur, glass of water in hand and his eyes fixed on some unknowable point on the dark horizon, Arthur gives up on trying to sleep and sits up in bed.

 

“What is it?” he asks quietly.

 

Merlin, to his credit, doesn’t pretend not to know what Arthur’s talking about.

 

“Something’s different,” he says.

 

“Different how?”

 

“I don’t know. Different. Does the weather seem to be getting warmer, to you?”

 

Frowning at the odd non-sequitur, Arthur considers. “Not really. But it’s only February. Sometimes it doesn’t start to warm up until May.”

 

Merlin nods, but he seems distracted.

 

“The days don’t seem to be getting any longer, either.”

 

“What are you saying?”

 

“Nothing. I’m not saying anything.” Finally, Merlin turns towards him, putting the glass down on the chest of drawers and climbing back into bed at Arthur’s side. “It’s just been bothering me, that’s all. I feel…cold. All the time. Yesterday when I woke up, my fingers were turning blue.”

 

Arthur doesn’t let himself think about the way Merlin had looked that night by the river, or how his skin had been blue-silver and dead the night Arthur had opened the window and let him in. Instead, he rolls over so that they’re facing one another, and tugs him close for a kiss, cupping Merlin’s jaw in both hands to feel the welcome beat of the pulse at his throat.

 

“Let me see what I can do to fix that,” he whispers, and Merlin groans, melting eagerly into Arthur’s embrace. And he’s warm, warm and yielding and alive, and Arthur doesn’t think about the fact that the snow outside has yet to melt, or that the news is calling this one of the longest, coldest winters on record. They’re safe, and happy, and together, and the weather has nothing to do with them.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


It takes exactly two weeks for Merlin to bring it up again, this time in the middle of the day, when Arthur is taking a well-deserved break and treating them both to lunch in a cafe around the corner from his flat. Afterwards, he is grateful that Merlin at least lets him finish eating before pushing his own plate away, untouched, and saying abruptly:

 

“I don’t think I can stay here much longer.”

 

Arthur’s heart sinks like a stone, and the pasta he’s just eaten turns to lead in his stomach. Nevertheless, he wills himself to remain calm.

 

“All right,” he says. “Where do you want to go?”

 

Merlin makes an impatient noise. “Don’t be stupid, Arthur. You know what I mean.”

 

“You can’t just _leave_. You have a home, a life.”

 

“I didn’t say I _wanted_ to go. But I think maybe I have to.”

 

Still, Arthur doesn’t relent. “Why?”

 

“Because!” Merlin throws up his hands. “Have you looked at the weather forecast lately? They’re expecting snow for the next week, maybe more to follow. Something’s wrong, and I think we both know what it is.”

 

“Just because you…melted, thawed, whatever, doesn’t mean it’s going to have an effect on the weather,” Arthur scoffs, but his heart is beating hard in his chest. He takes hold of his coffee with both hands, trying to warm up his chilled fingers. “There’s this little thing called global warming you might want to consider. I hear it’s all the rage these days.”

 

“Arthur.” Merlin stops him with a look. “I’m pretty sure a blizzard in March is not the result of climate change. It’s hardly thawed at all since January.”

 

Arthur wants, desperately, to be able to prove him wrong, clearly and without room for equivocation. The weather, after all, is still a vague and mysterious concept in many ways and has never quite been understood by the general population, himself included. For all Merlin knows, it could be a fluke of some kind, a harmless freak of nature.

 

And yet.

 

Arthur sighs, closing his eyes.

 

“What are you going to do?” he asks, hating himself for giving in. “Step inside a walk-in freezer and wait until you turn into an icicle?”

 

“Not exactly,” Merlin says. He fidgets a little, looking down at his once-steaming coffee, now cold and congealed in the cup. “But I think I have to go back.”

 

“Back where?”

 

“Back _there_.” Merlin gestures vaguely, a brief wave of his arm that encompasses both everything and nothing. “I feel like…like I left a tap dripping in the sink, or something. Like someone’s calling me, but I can’t quite hear what they’re saying. I can’t sleep,” he admits, his voice quiet. “And it’s getting worse. It’s only going to get harder the longer I keep putting it off.”

 

Arthur is silent, not trusting himself to speak. Merlin reaches across the table and grabs hold of his arm.

 

“I don’t want to leave you.”

 

“But you’re going to anyway.”

 

“I’m sorry. I don’t think I have any choice.”

 

Arthur pushes back his chair and gets to his feet, Merlin’s hand falling away from his arm as he follows suit.

 

“Fine,” he says finally. “Fine. But not until after the weekend, all right? I can’t—I need some time to get used to the idea.”

 

Merlin studies him for a moment, face inscrutable, and nods.

 

“Not until after the weekend,” he says. “I promise.”

  
  
  


 

* * *

 

 

XI

  


For the first time since Merlin reappeared in his life, Arthur sleeps on the couch instead of in bed with him that night. Maybe it’s stupid, wasting one of the few evenings they have left together, but when Merlin announces he’s going to turn in and looks at Arthur to see if he’s coming too, Arthur just shakes his head and tells him not to wait up. Merlin eyes him narrowly for a moment, but maybe he understands Arthur’s reasons better than he does himself because he just shrugs and walks into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

 

Arthur sits on the sofa with the telly on and his knees tucked close to his chest, telling himself it’s for the best if they start separating now, before it’s time. Maybe it will make the blow easier to stomach when Merlin finally leaves him. Maybe he’ll wake up in the morning and find that pigs can fly. He watches episode after episode of late-night TV without really seeing any of it, and at three in the morning his resolve breaks and he bolts for the master bedroom without a second thought, whispering Merlin’s name as he crawls under the sheets beside him.

 

Merlin welcomes him in without a word, and they cling to one another desperately in the darkness, clutching at each other like it’s the last time they’ll ever touch. Arthur feels almost wild with it, the inescapable knowledge that Merlin is going to leave again, might not come back. He hadn’t thought it was possible for his heart to break twice in one lifetime, and yet here it is, shattering all over again.

 

Later, Merlin presses himself against Arthur, skin to skin all along his body, like he’s storing up the warmth of him for the days to come.

 

“I’m sorry,” Arthur whispers, his face buried in Merlin’s hair. “I know it’s not your fault.”

 

Merlin strokes his hands along Arthur’s back, his fingers splayed out over the knobs of his spine, tracing the line of each rib with his fingertips, and says nothing at all.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


_THEN_

 

The day of Merlin’s funeral had been clear and cloudless, the kind of day that made people wary of snow-blindness and remark that it ought to have been summer. Arthur allowed himself to be bundled into the car and taken to the church without really noticing, staring out the window and letting the sights wash past him unseen. He had wanted them to wait until spring, until the river thawed and they had the chance of recovering a body, but both Hunith and Uther had insisted that they needed the closure of a funeral even if the coffin was empty.

 

Eventually, Arthur had stopped arguing. It didn’t matter, anyway. None of this was real. Merlin couldn’t really be dead. Any minute now he was going to turn up, red-faced and blundering, and explain how it had all been some kind of misunderstanding. Arthur would tease him, of course, or possibly kiss him, or both, but then they would go to uni together the way they’d planned and live happily ever after, and all this would be like a bad dream, if only Arthur could figure out how to wake up.

 

“Arthur?” Morgana’s hand touched his arm, and he turned towards her, startled. She was pale and pretty in a plain black dress, her dark hair pulled back into a severe bun. She had been away on Christmas break when Uther had called, but she’d come straight back to be with Arthur when she heard, for which he supposed he ought to be grateful. It was hard, just now, to summon the appropriate emotions: he was tired, so tired, and Morgana insisted on treating him like he was made of glass, which somehow just made everything worse. Her grip tightened for a moment before she released him, looking troubled. “We’re here.”

 

Arthur didn’t remember much about the funeral. He listened to the eulogies with half an ear, but none of them seemed to be about the person he had known — none of them sounded anything like the Merlin he had grown up with. He gave his own speech without faltering, looking out over the tear-stained faces of his classmates without so much as a single flinch. Uther gave him a brusque nod of approval when he stepped down, and Morgana tucked her arm through his as he settled back in his seat.

 

“You did well up there,” she said. But Arthur didn’t really hear her.

 

The only thing that stuck in his head about that day was how cold it had been, in spite of the sun. He had remained standing by the grave long after the others left, watching the gravediggers fill it in with frozen earth, their faces red and covered in sweat, breath coming harshly in the crisp air. The grave stood out like a badly-healed scar in the snowy churchyard, fresh flakes drifting down as if in mockery from the once-clear sky. Abruptly, Arthur hated it: hated the cold, the wet, the clinging numbness that had blanketed his life and stolen his best friend. He shoved his fingers in his pockets and turned on his heel, striding off down the hill to where his father and Morgana were waiting in the car.

 

 _We’re going to be fine_ , Merlin had said, just before the ice had swallowed him up. _I promise_.

 

What Arthur wanted to know was _when_.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  
  


_NOW_

 

The day Merlin leaves him for the second time, it rains. The sky is grey and stormy, with the threat of further snow in the bruise-bellied clouds on the eastern horizon. Arthur is subdued, but refuses to be sulky. He skips his final Pol Sci lecture and spends the day with Merlin, visiting Art Galleries and stupid Museums and talking about nothing important while they sip hot chocolates and feed each other lemon meringue pie. It’s pointless to pretend this is a normal day so they don’t try, and Arthur finds himself taking an excessive number of photographs and video-clips in an effort to remember everything about Merlin that might be forgotten, from the softness of his hair to the sweet curl of his smile and the way he takes too many sugars in his tea.

 

Later, he gets blind drunk and calls Morgana on his phone even though it’s the middle of the night. She answers on the second ring, alarmed, her voice tinny through the tiny speakers.

 

“Arthur? What is it? Are you all right?”

 

“He’s gone,” Arthur says, staring out the window into the dark. “Merlin’s gone.”

 

“Oh, Arthur,” she says, and for once there’s nothing but sympathy in her voice. “I’ll be right there.”

  


 

* * *

  
  


XII

  


Arthur thinks about Merlin constantly, as the snow melts slowly into slush and then to frost, and gradually the flowers begin to bloom again and the trees regain their leaves. It’s not the summer it’s supposed to be, but at least it’s warm—Merlin would be glad about that, he supposes.

 

Arthur graduates with honours, in spite of everything, and immediately puts his flat on the market. He tells his father it’s because life’s too short, et cetera, but he can tell Uther doesn’t believe it. He thinks Merlin was a charlatan, a fake, and now he’s broken Arthur’s heart, but the truth is much too complicated to explain. One mention of the word ‘magic’ and Uther becomes a stranger, as cold and distant as a winter spirit himself. Morgana only looks at Arthur with too-knowing eyes and hugs him tight.

 

“He’ll come back, you know," she says, close to his ear so that only Arthur can hear her. “In the winter. The two of you won’t be apart forever.”

 

“You think so?” Arthur asks, not letting go.

 

“Magic requires balance—that’s what all the books say, anyway. Like the story of Persephone, you remember?”

 

“The girl who had to spend half the year in the underworld?”

 

“That’s the one. Ostensibly, it’s a myth, but I think the same principle applies here too, if for different reasons. Magic can bring Merlin back,” she adds, sensing Arthur’s confusion. “But at a cost. His spirit is tied to the cycle of the seasons, so for every month he spends back in the mortal world, he must spend three back in the—well, wherever spirits go when they’re not here.” She lets him go and steps back, patting his cheek in an almost maternal fashion. “He’ll be back, you’ll see.”

 

“I hope you’re right,” Arthur says, but he can’t bring himself to believe it.

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


He goes overseas; spends a month in Japan, another in the South Island of New Zealand. He doesn’t want to admit it to himself, but he’s chasing the winter, hoping vaguely that maybe if he can just spend long enough in the snow then Merlin will come back to him and everything will be as it was. He doesn’t care if he has to spend the rest of his life freezing to death as long as Merlin is right there with him.

 

Merlin, however, is nowhere to be seen, though sometimes Arthur gets a sense of him when the wind tugs playfully at his hair or he ends up chasing his scarf along a snow-covered road in the wilds of Wanaka. It’s as if he has walked into a room that Merlin has just stepped out of for a moment, and any second now he’ll come back as if he never went away.

 

That autumn, when the leaves begin to turn, Arthur returns to England and purchases a farm in the countryside near Ealdor. It’s strange to be out in the woods again, the only living soul for what feels like miles. The farmhouse is old and drafty and creaks in the cold weather. It makes Arthur think of boats on the ocean, and it suits him to consider himself adrift, a lone wanderer on foreign shores. He thinks perhaps he’s living on some sort of knife’s-edge, the border between here and _there_ , wherever there is; at night, there are will-o-wisps in the trees, and sometimes voices.

 

At last, one evening in late October the weather moves from frosty to frigid and the sky turns a deep bruise-purple, close to black. Small flurries dance above the trees, and Arthur knows that now is the time. Pulling on his shoes, he steps out into the chill night air and pulls the door closed behind him. The wind plucks at his trousers with each step, as though trying to pull him back, but Arthur keeps walking, down through the forest towards the river. It’s not quite frozen yet, still moving sluggishly around great sheets of ice, but he’s pretty sure it’s exactly where he needs to be.

 

“Merlin,” he whispers, tipping his face up to the sky. The first tiny flake touches his cheek, frozen and feather-soft, like a kiss. “It’s time to come home.”

  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  


_THEN_

 

When he woke, Merlin was surrounded by ice, but he didn’t feel cold. He hung suspended in the water, breathing without taking in air, his body stirring into wakefulness even though he knew he couldn’t possibly be alive. He remembered drowning too vividly for it to have been a dream, and yet here he was, floating in the current, conscious and aware in a way he had never been before.

 

It was a strange feeling. Everything was silent, still, shafts of refracted moonlight breaking the darkness around him. He could see the dim shadows of rocks and waterweed, the darting shapes of fish as they hurried past him. He couldn’t feel his heartbeat, but there was something else, the same, bone-deep thrum he felt in his veins when he used magic.

 

He swam towards the surface. It was like moving in slow motion, his feet dragged down by some impossible weight, and it was only when he broke through the ice that the cold hit, sharp as a knife that was slicing him in two.

 

With it came the memories.

 

“Arthur,” he gasped, glancing around wildly. He was a long way from the place where he had fallen through: the shapes on the horizon weren’t ones he recognised, and he could sense that some time had passed, but he didn’t know how much, whether it was minutes or hours or days. Where was Arthur? He wouldn’t just have left Merlin to drown, but he couldn’t still be waiting after all this time.

 

He drifted. There was a breeze, and Merlin was light, intangible. He was—flying. It should have been strange to him, but something in him was beginning to orient itself, directing his course over the treetops towards the cluster of lights he could see in the distance. He would find his mother, that was what he would do. She would know what had happened to him, and as long as he could find Arthur he knew all would be well.

 

He had made a promise, after all, and no matter what happened, he was determined to keep it.

 

He and Arthur were going to be just fine.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warnings:** Story deals with major character death (temporary) and resultant grief and survivor's guilt. Also depicts sex between a live character and a (technically) dead character (NOT necrophilia, I swear) and includes various supernatural/horror elements. The ending is deliberately left open and may therefore be interpreted as unhappy or bittersweet. I prefer to regard it as hopeful.


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